So…What Do YOU Do?

So…What Do YOU Do?

As the holiday season is beginning to wrap up, so are the holiday parties! Every December, weekend calendars fill up across the country. From company dinners, to neighborhood gatherings, to fancy New Year’s Eve soirees, your mingling shoes have been polished up and put to good use. Regardless of location or occasion, the inevitable favorite small-talk question comes up: “So…what do you do for a living?” As media buyers and planners, we prep for the follow ups to our answer, as people try to simplify our response. “Oh, what’s that?” or “So, advertising? How cool.” or “How much does it really cost to run a spot during the Superbowl?” If only it were that easy.

In my years of answering these questions, I’ve come to find that most people are fascinated by the idea of advertising agencies and what it is like to work in one. We can thank the creators of Mad Men or movies that feature ad agency employees like What Women Want or How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. The general population seems to think that advertising agencies are all fancy loft-style offices residing in skyscrapers that only exist in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.

The truth we know, is that advertising agencies and media buyers pop up in the darndest of places. Small office buildings with awkward layouts surrounded by printer paper boxes, strip mall office buildings with desks pushed up against the walls and a random table parked in the middle, or an antique desk at a home in Anywhere, USA where a former media sales rep or disgruntled corporate employee has gone off on their own to start taking their clients’ matters in their own hands.

Once you get past the idea of an ad agency and the talk that goes along with it, you have the task of explaining what a buyer/planner actually does. Here’s a few ways I personally have described it or heard it described in layman’s terms:

No matter how you slice it, media buyers/planners know that we wear many hats and these hats are impossible to quantify quickly. We do so much more than just plan and place buys. Our day to day jobs are never the same. There are many ways we spend our days. We spend time on the phone fostering relationships with representatives. We pour over demographic research and local market data to ensure our plans are accurate and effective. We sit in meetings with account executives and teams to discuss client goals and establish budgets. We talk clients off the ledge when they want to pull-the-plug-on-advertising-in-general-because-it-didn’t-work-after-2-days. We bridge the gap between sales and creative to ensure that what we have worked so hard to place actually has a message to move the meter. We read newsletters, data-feeds and emails that keep us up to date on national trends. We monitor our client’s competitor data to stay sharp. We survive office politics. And that’s just scraping the surface! As a result of ALL this, I think my favorite description is multi-tasking ninja.

However, I saw this T-shirt in an ad recently…and now more than ever I think I would like to buy it. I’d wear it to the next holiday party I attend, with a red and green cardigan just to keep it festive.

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS

Bluhorn is a great solution for small agencies like it has been for ours. It has saved us money by creating our orders in a timely matter. Once information is inputted everything else is a cinch. But I would have to say that their customer/ tech support is their strongest feature, which is rare to get with most online services. Every time we have had a question or issue, support has been there to answer or solve the problem as if we were their only client. Issues are solved immediately and if for whatever reason there is a delay they are good at keeping us aware of the situation. Thank you Wes from Bluhorn for solving all of our issues!

Rosa Pratt, Media Director, HMC Advertising

Bluhorn has been a real asset to my agency. It has saved us an enormous amount of time along with improving our accuracy of orders being placed. The software has cut down our staff’s time spent with the order and in turn can now have them concentrate on other areas needed at the agency. This program is very user friendly and the support team answers your questions and takes care of any issues immediately. For the money, you cannot beat what this software will do for your company.

Kelly Alexander, President, KCo Advertising Agency

BluHorn is a software lifesaver! After we picked up a gubernatorial candidate, our media buying demands increased dramatically. The BluHorn software simplified the buys, and saved an amazing amount of time that is normally devoted to placing strategically. Many media buying systems are complicated, expensive, or unfriendly. BluHorn is amazingly affordable and provides high end service!